2015 Report Cards: House Democrats

These special year-end statistics dissect the legislative records of Members of Congress during the 2015 legislative year (Jan 6, 2015-Dec 31, 2015), looking at Members who served at the end of that period. This page was last updated on Jan 9, 2016.

House Democrats

Ideology Score

Our unique ideology analysis assigns a score to Members of Congress according to their legislative behavior by how similar the pattern of bills and resolutions they cosponsor are to other Members of Congress. The score can be interpreted as a conservative—liberal scale, although of course it only takes into account a small aspect of reality.

House Democrats

For more, see our methodology. An ideology score is not computed for Members of Congress who introduced fewer than 10 bills or who have a low leadership score, as there is usually not enough data in these cases to compute reliable statistics. Note that because on this page only legislative activity in 2015 is considered, the ideology score here may differ from those elsewhere on GovTrack.

Joining Bipartisan Bills

In this era of partisanship, it is encouraging to see Members of Congress working across the aisle. This is the percent of bills cosponsored by each legislator which were introduced by a member of the other party.

House Democrats

A bill or joint resolution is considered enacted if it or an exactly identical bill to it is enacted as law. We only consider bills that the legislator was the primary sponsor of. While a legislator may lay claim to authoring other bills that became law, such as through incorporation into larger bills, these cases are difficult for us to track quantitatively.

Leadership Score

Our unique leadership analysis looks at who is cosponsoring whose bills. A higher score
shows a greater ability to get cosponsors on bills.

House Democrats

For more, see our methodology. A leadership score is not computed for Members of Congress who introduced fewer than 10 bills, as there is usually not enough data in these cases to compute reliable statistics. Note that because on this page only legislative activity in 2015 is considered, the leadership scores here may differ from those elsewhere on GovTrack.

The Speaker of the House is not included in this statistic because according to current House rules, the Speaker of the House is not required to vote in “ordinary legislative proceedings, and the delegates from the five island territories and the District of Columbia are also not included because they were not elligible to vote in any roll call votes.

Powerful Cosponsors

The number of bills that each legislator introduced in 2015 that had a cosponsor who was a chair or ranking member of a committee that the bill was referred to. Getting support from committee leaders on relevant committees is a crucial step in moving legislation forward.

House Democrats

Working with the Other Chamber

The House and Senate often work on the same issue simultaneously by introducing companion bills in each chamber. This is the number of bills introduced by each legislator in 2015 that had a companion bill in the other chamber. Working with a sponsor in the other chamber makes a bill more likely to be passed by both the House and Senate.

House Democrats

Companion bills are those that are identified as “identical” by Congress’s Congressional Research Service.

Writing Bipartisan Bills

In this era of partisanship, it is encouraging to see Members of Congress working across the aisle. This is the percent of bills introduced by each legislator in 2015 which had both a Democratic cosponsor and a Republican cosponsor.

Only Members of Congress who sponsored more than 10 bills and resolutions are included in this statistic.

Additional Notes

The Speaker’s Votes: Missed votes are not computed for the Speaker of the House. According to current House rules, the Speaker of the House is not required to vote in “ordinary legislative proceedings.” In practice this means the Speaker of the House rarely votes but is not considered absent.

Leadership/Ideology: The leadership and ideology scores are not displayed for Members of Congress who introduced fewer than 10 bills, or, for ideology, for Members of Congress that have a low leadership score, as there is usually not enough data in these cases to compute reliable leadership and ideology statistics.

Missing Bills: We exclude bills from some statistics where the sponsor’s original intent is not in the final bill because the bill’s text was replaced in whole with unrelated provisions (i.e. it became a vehicle for passage of unrelated provisions).

Ranking Members (RkMembs): The chair of a committee is always selected from the political party that holds the most seats in the chamber, called the “majority party”. The “ranking member” (sometimes “RkMembs”) is the title given to the senior-most member of the committee not in the majority party.

Freshmen/Sophomores: Freshmen and sophomores are Members of Congress whose first term (in the same chamber at the end of 2015) was the 114th Congress (freshmen) or 113th (sophomores). Members of Congress who took office within the last few months of a Congress are considered freshmen in the next Congress as well.